Moosehawk's Workbook

[moosehawk]

About me Hello! I'm Moosehawk, a 23 year old app developer from the U.S. I heard of lucid dreaming for the first time just a little over a month ago and ever since have been trying to improve my waking awareness as well awareness in my dreams since. Before that, I've only ever had one lucid dream in my life that lasted about 2 seconds and I ended up in waking sleep paralysis and a scary as hell falling sensation. I used to experience sleep paralysis quite often as a teenager. I always felt like I was going to die, and it wasn't until recently that I've learned to love the experience. My progress so far I've been keeping a dream journal since July 17th. In the last half of July, I recorded an average of 1.7 dreams a night with 2+ nights that I experienced either no dream or only fragments. In August, I've improved my dream recall to an average of 4.3 dreams a night so far and the quality is getting much better. I've experienced 4 lucid dreams so far: A false awakening LD that was triggered by a light switch not working. I woke up immediately after lucidity. 3 more lucid dreams that all happened on one night about 2 weeks ago, although they were all only partial lucidity with little control. 1 was an accidental WILD (I fell backwards into darkness then woke up in my bed in a dream), the other 2 were DILDs possibly from MILDing. I immediately began trying to become lucid using WILD since I usually fall asleep in either seconds or under a few minutes at most. I've since given up on that since my schedule doesn't allow for any loss of sleep (or else I'd only be working and sleeping all day), plus since I've started becoming more aware in my waking life I've found out that my household is actually really noisy (noise has ruined my WILD attempts on several occasions). So with that, I'm DILD or bust. Where I am now For the last 2 weeks I've been attempting MILD. It's yielded 2 LDs so far, but both were within an hour of each other and were relatively short and low lucidity. For the past 3 days I've been practicing ADA. When I go to bed, I do a little stretching and relaxation then I just sit either on the floor on in my computer chair and do some visualization and repeat a mantra to myself. I go to bed, do WBTB @ 4.5 hours, 6 hours, and on the weekends, 7.5 hours. My WBTB time doesn't have much structure; sometimes I stay up 5 minutes, sometimes it's 30 minutes, but I always spend the time doing something LD related. When I go back to bed, I repeat my mantra to myself and visualize myself becoming lucid usually in my most appealing dream that I had that night so far or from the night before (this is MILD right?). Sometimes I can repeat the mantra once and I'm already out, and other times I can repeat it for a while but my mind drifts off to other places and by the time I bring myself back I feel like I can re-concentrate on my intention to become lucid. Where I need help I think my most glaring area right now is how I perform the MILD technique, although if this is read by anyone else, please feel free to point out any glaring mistakes above! A few questions: I've been changing up the mantra I use night-to-night. I just haven't found one that feels "right" yet. Am I allowed to change it, or should I find one and stick with it? I have trouble with staying awake sometimes to perform MILD, even after staying awake for 30 minutes! Can I perform the technique sitting up and then continue it as I lay down, or should I work on controlling my efforts while laying down?

[moosehawk]

A side note on my ADA and RC progression: I've been pretty good about keeping up my vision, hearing, breathing and blinking ADA. I've occasionally gotten lost in my thoughts throughout the day but I've been quick to bring myself back to the present. I've definitely noticed an increase in my awareness when listening to people directly and I find myself remembering a lot more about what somebody says to me. I haven't been very good about reality checking when running in to my dream signs. I always forget and remember it when it's too late. And then sometimes if I experience multiple dream signs in a row and I remember to RC on all of them I feel like I'm not putting enough weight into the RC. I'll usually tell myself I'm dreaming and then perform a nose plug RC with the expectation that I'll breathe through my nose, but if I do this 3 times in 20 minutes I feel like I'm making too much of a habit of it. Maybe I'm just over-thinking it though and I should just do it.

[gab]

Welcome do the DILD workshop, moosehawk! That's a very nice intro. You seem to have your stuff together. About me .... waking awareness as well awareness in my dreams since. Before that, I've only ever had one lucid dream in my life that lasted about 2 seconds and I ended up in waking sleep paralysis and a scary as hell falling sensation. I used to experience sleep paralysis quite often as a teenager. I always felt like I was going to die, and it wasn't until recently that I've learned to love the experience. Awareness is important. That's what will trigger lucidity, so keep at it. The ADA you practice is good. If yould like to expand on that knowledge, please read this WILD class in the DV Academy. This link is for awareness, but if you read other lessons, you will not be sorry, because lots of the stuff applies for other induction techniques as well. SP can be scary, glad you got used to it. The falling sensation, or flying at incredible speed is common sensation. I personally like it very much. When the falling stops, you could be in a dream, so try and do RC. You can just get up from bed (that's where many LDs start out) and do what you planned on doing in LD. My progress so far I've been keeping a dream journal since July 17th. In the last half of July, I recorded an average of 1.7 dreams a night with 2+ nights that I experienced either no dream or only fragments. In August, I've improved my dream recall to an average of 4.3 dreams a night so far and the quality is getting much better. DJ is a must and your recall is really good. ....although they were all only partial lucidity with little control. You can have a LD with little or no control. I immediately began trying to become lucid using WILD since I usually fall asleep in either seconds or under a few minutes at most. I've since given up on that since my schedule doesn't allow for any loss of sleep (or else I'd only be working and sleeping all day), plus since I've started becoming more aware in my waking life I've found out that my household is actually really noisy (noise has ruined my WILD attempts on several occasions). So with that, I'm DILD or bust. There is another technique you can try instead of WILD. It's DEILD (dream exit induced LD). When you wake up at night from a dream and you don't move and don't open your eyes, just stay in that groggy state. Within 5-60 seconds, you should fall back into a dream, but this time you are aware of it so it will be LD. It's basically a shortened WILD. It's very effective and you can link many LDs together. For the last 2 weeks I've been attempting MILD. It's yielded 2 LDs so far, but both were within an hour of each other and were relatively short and low lucidity. For the past 3 days I've been practicing ADA. When I go to bed, I do a little stretching and relaxation then I just sit either on the floor on in my computer chair and do some visualization and repeat a mantra to myself. I go to bed, do WBTB @ 4.5 hours, 6 hours, and on the weekends, 7.5 hours. My WBTB time doesn't have much structure; sometimes I stay up 5 minutes, sometimes it's 30 minutes, but I always spend the time doing something LD related. OK, so you do awareness mantras visualization You can add some Reality Checks to the mix. You can read this collection of all things for MILD/DILD. When I go back to bed, I repeat my mantra to myself and visualize myself becoming lucid usually in my most appealing dream that I had that night so far or from the night before (this is MILD right?). Sometimes I can repeat the mantra once and I'm already out, and other times I can repeat it for a while but my mind drifts off to other places and by the time I bring myself back I feel like I can re-concentrate on my intention to become lucid. Mantras are very effective. Pretty much anything can become a mantra, if it sounds and feel good to you. It should not be too long and it should be in present, never future tense. It's most effective, if it's a last thought you have before dozing off. It becomes even more effective, if you say it in rhythm with your breathing, because that way it's hypnotic. It should feel natural and should not disrupt your natural breathing pattern. The drifting off part is fine, just gently bring yourself back to your mantra. It also serves another purpose - same as meditation would - to clear your mind of any thoughts and to concentrate only on your goal. Visualizing previous dream is great, but it's even better to visualize a place, that is very familiar to you. Like you childhood house, your room, or any other place that you can see clearly and can recall smells and sounds. I think my most glaring area right now is how I perform the MILD technique, although if this is read by anyone else, please feel free to point out any glaring mistakes above! I've been changing up the mantra I use night-to-night. I just haven't found one that feels "right" yet. Am I allowed to change it, or should I find one and stick with it? I have trouble with staying awake sometimes to perform MILD, even after staying awake for 30 minutes! Can I perform the technique sitting up and then continue it as I lay down, or should I work on controlling my efforts while laying down? MILD is basically just mantras. If you add reality checks to it, and the awareness you are already doing, you will have much better chances at becoming lucid. It's perfectly OK to be changing your mantra. I have several of them for different goals. As you saying your mantra, you will find the right words and the length of it until it sounds and feels right. I also say my mantras and do some "looking at hands" RC while sitting up on bed, and when I lay down, I whisper mantra till I get sleepy and then I just think it. The most important thing in LDing is the intent to have a LD. You have to KNOW, that you can do it. Just wishing is not enough. And enthusiasm and happiness are a huge part of success. Hope this covers it all, please ask if I left something out or you would like me to elaborate on something. Happy dreams

[gab]

A side note on my ADA and RC progression: I've been pretty good about keeping up my vision, hearing, breathing and blinking ADA. I've occasionally gotten lost in my thoughts throughout the day but I've been quick to bring myself back to the present. I've definitely noticed an increase in my awareness when listening to people directly and I find myself remembering a lot more about what somebody says to me. I haven't been very good about reality checking when running in to my dream signs. I always forget and remember it when it's too late. And then sometimes if I experience multiple dream signs in a row and I remember to RC on all of them I feel like I'm not putting enough weight into the RC. I'll usually tell myself I'm dreaming and then perform a nose plug RC with the expectation that I'll breathe through my nose, but if I do this 3 times in 20 minutes I feel like I'm making too much of a habit of it. Maybe I'm just over-thinking it though and I should just do it. It's very important to put emotions into your RCs. On top of RCing on my dream signs, I RC at random times. This will help, if your dream sign won't show in a dream. I usually act startled and surprised. I look around and think - wow, what if this is a dream. Examine my surroundings and do thumb/palm, nose plug and looking at hands RCs. When I'm satisfied that it's not a dream, I say my mantra "next time I'm dreaming, I look at my hands and realize I'm dreaming". I sometimes throw in a different RC like the levitation one - if I was in a dream, I would levitate and expect to rise up.

[moosehawk]

Awesome response gab! Awareness is important. That's what will trigger lucidity, so keep at it. The ADA you practice is good. If yould like to expand on that knowledge, please read this WILD class in the DV Academy. This link is for awareness, but if you read other lessons, you will not be sorry, because lots of the stuff applies for other induction techniques as well. I'll definitely check this out. There is another technique you can try instead of WILD. It's DEILD (dream exit induced LD). When you wake up at night from a dream and you don't move and don't open your eyes, just stay in that groggy state. Within 5-60 seconds, you should fall back into a dream, but this time you are aware of it so it will be LD. It's basically a shortened WILD. It's very effective and you can link many LDs together. DEILD sounds like an awesome technique but I'll be honest, I'm not entirely confident in my ability to DEILD for a few reasons. I'm a heavy sleeper so even if I do wake up naturally in the night I usually find myself in a really confused state and have trouble focusing on what I need to do. Even simple things like remembering a dream and then writing it down even when I use a "I am more aware and remember my dreams" or similar mantra. Another reason is something that I experienced over the last 2 nights. I usually set vibrating alarms towards the end of my REM cycles so I can better remember my dreams and write them down. My girlfriend stayed over the last 2 nights and she's a light sleeper so I nixed my dream recall alarms and just set my 4.5h and 6h WBTB ones. The first night I turned off my 4.5h alarm without remembering doing so. Both nights I only remembered one dream and I was lucky that I could squeeze a morning nap in on the first day before work to provide myself with an extra dream and to make up for the 4.5h LD chance. Basically, my dream recall seems to suffer whenever I can't wake up at the end of my REM cycles and I haven't had much success with autosuggestion waking me up. With that being said, I'm all for trying DEILD but I need to make sure a.) that it isn't going to mess with my dream recall if I fall back asleep and forget everything and b.) I can continue trying to progress with MILD. I'm going to look into seeing if I can implement this into my routine while still fulfilling both of those criteria. I think I need to set some stepping-stone goals first though such as being able to use autosuggestion to wake up and to be more controlled when I do wake up. Visualizing previous dream is great, but it's even better to visualize a place, that is very familiar to you. Like you childhood house, your room, or any other place that you can see clearly and can recall smells and sounds. Great point. This may work wonders for me because I believe one of my dream signs is my childhood house. I seem to end up there in my dreams maybe once or twice per week, so I'll try visualizing that next time. I also say my mantras and do some "looking at hands" RC while sitting up on bed, and when I lay down, I whisper mantra till I get sleepy and then I just think it. Last time I tried plugging my nose while saying my mantra out loud . Sometimes when I keep repeating the mantra I'll think that I've only been doing it for 3-5 minutes and then it feels like my mind drifts off for just a second or two, I bring myself back but when I look at the clock 20 or 30 minutes have already passed. It's like I warped through time and didn't realize it. Is this normal?

[moosehawk]

I had a false awakening last night during one of my WBTBs where the first thing I did was look at my e-mail on my phone and I saw a message from you, gab, that said "Right now is the perfect time for you to be attempting to LD!" When I woke up this morning I legitimately thought I had read that during a time when I was awake. It wasn't until just now that I realized it was a dream.

[moosehawk]

Just had my first lucid dream (DILD from a WILD) in 17 days. Almost had a successful DEILD too. I started getting psyched up yesterday morning about being able to try a WILD since the house was going to be empty. I did a WBTB at 4.5 hours for 30 minutes (I intended for 10-15 mins but the dog wanted to play at 4:45am). I didn't really think about LDing much during the time since I was pre-occupied with the dog, but I did keep up my ADA for most of it. I laid back down and set 3 pillows up for myself. This fixed my swallowing problem that I've experienced in WILDs so much before I switched to DILDing. I repeated "1... I'm dreaming. 2... I'm dreaming." until I finally lost it at around 50 and fell asleep. I became randomly lucid a few minutes into the dream which leads me to believe I failed the WILD itself but it actually may have caused a DILD. I was only slightly suspicious I was dreaming since it took place at work so I tried 2 RCs: looking at hands and plugging my nose. My hands appeared 100% perfectly normal which slightly disappointed me. I was still suspicious so I tried a nose RC and for some reason I still couldn't breathe through my plugged nose. I failed to believe the results of the RCs and still thought I was dreaming so a few moments later I re-tried a nose RC and it finally worked. My first lucid goal is to fly with extra bonus points for doing it by jumping off a building. Coincidentally, I just happened to be inside of a large building. Some events took place before I could eventually get to the top of it, but when I did I stood on the ledge and started to become frightened when looking down ("What if this is real life, I jump and I die?"). I told myself it's just a dream and I re-checked my nose RC (I'm a very careful person IRL too), but my nose was now filled with mucus which made it harder to get clear results. My dream faded as I was looking off the building and I didn't get to complete my goal I didn't react fast enough to keep the dream alive but instead my first thoughts were to try DEILD! I consciously kept my eyes closed and held still as I transitioned from sleep to wake but I must have been at the end of a REM cycle or didn't do something correctly because I just laid there for a few minutes before finally experiencing some hallucinations. I interrupted those hallucinations by trying to move my arms in them and instead flailed them around wildly under my bed sheets. This experience has got me more interested in DEILD.

[moosehawk]

On the 27th I had a 2nd LD in 2 days. I actually got to complete my goal of flying too since I chickened out in the 1st LD! I also decided to prove to myself that there is no pain in dreams by doing an experiment. After I was done flying, I got on top of the roof of a house. There was a deck below where I was standing, so I jumped face first into the deck about 15 feet below me without trying to break my fall. I felt a thud but there was no pain. Kind of a cool experience After those 2 days I think I've been taking things a little too easy though. I need to force myself to continue my ADA and RCs and go to bed earlier.

[gab]

1. When you wake up as you say in confused state, that's probably not such a bad thing. In fact, you should stay groggy and still half asleep for a DEILD to work. Just think to yourself "I'm getting back" and visualize your previous dream. 2. If you have a good recall in general, then I would not worry too much about not remembering some dreams because of the WBTB or DEILD or anything else. I mean, if it means that you will have lucid, I wouldn't mind forgetting a dream or two. 3. Try this to train yourself not to move when you wake up. Each time you wake up and move- tell yourself next time I won't move. 4. When you dosed off and came back to, maybe you fell asleep for longer than you thought. 5. FAs - to catch them, do RC each time you get up from your bed. Pretty soon you'll be RCing in FAs and that will get you lucid. 6. What a way to check if you feel pain in a dream - hehe, that's a good one. Yes, daytime awareness is the most important thing (right next to intent). So keep at it. Please do ask, if I left something out. Happy dreams